Eyes on agency after boy's death

By John Simerman
November 1, 2006

CONTRA COSTA TIMES

The county agency that looks into child abuse reports is investigating its own actions after the death Friday of an 8-year-old Richmond boy who last year was the subject of repeated referrals to social workers who found them unworthy of further investigation.

The boy's mother, Teresa Moses, 23, remained jailed Tuesday in Richmond, suspected of murder, torture and child endangerment.

Police say she carried out a long pattern of abuse against her son, Raijon Daniels, who was pronounced dead at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in Richmond after ingesting pine-scented household cleaner.

Police say Moses tortured the boy for more than a year. His body was covered with welts and bruises, chemical burns and bedsores. Rope marks branded his limbs.

Officials with Contra Costa County Children and Family Services on Tuesday refused to release the history of their contacts with Raijon or discuss the case, citing confidentiality. They are required, however, to report a summary of that history to the state Department of Social Services, which must make it public.

Police reports of contacts with Raijon show no evidence that CFS caseworkers ever inspected the home. Twice, police reported to CFS that Raijon ran away, and once, an official at his former school, King Elementary, reported to CFS concerns about his behavior and lack of nutrition. All of the referrals came last year.

Moses, who gave birth to Raijon when she was 15, had told school officials to stop feeding him cafeteria food. She later pulled him out of the school.

Moses dismissed the report by school officials in a Nov. 7, 2005, letter to a county court commissioner in a child custody case over her daughter. She wrote that she had stopped spoiling Raijon with junk food, and his anger led him to "go to school begging, lying and over-exaggerating the hunger because of his new eating habits ...

"My son is very smart, intelligent, crafty and sneaky when need be and because of the change of attention that he was receiving he would go to any lengths to get that unwarranted attention from whomever he could victimize."

Moses also wrote of her new approach to parenting -- to be tougher on her son, whom she described as spoiled.

"I changed my slothful attitude and non-responsive spirit to proper discipline, to constructive discipline, time-outs, reading books, stay in your room and study, things of that nature when necessary to complete a balance in his life."

With each referral, county social workers found no reason to investigate further, at least twice "assessing out" the reports. Generally, the term means "we didn't feel they merited an investigation," said agency spokeswoman Lynn Yaney.

Joe Valentine, director of the county's Employment and Human Services Department, which oversees CFS, pledged a thorough investigation.

"In any situation where there has been a child death or serious injury, we go back over our procedures with a fine-tooth comb to see if we missed any information or clues, whether we did everything we could possibly do," he said.

The state Department of Social Services reviews such child death cases but rarely imposes sanctions on a county welfare agency if it finds problems, said spokesman Michael Weston.

"We'll review this case. ... We may say, 'Hey, this is something you may want to look at.' But we don't really go in there with authority to determine whether or not it was done right or wrong. We don't go with a heavy hand."

In rare cases, when the state agency uncovers alarming, systemic problems or violations of state law, it has threatened to take over a county welfare agency, but it has never done so, said Weston.

In a report this year, the Oakland-based National Center for Youth Law ranked Contra Costa eighth best in the state, and the top large county, in the overall performance of child protective services, based on state and federal standards.

Those standards do not include the "quality of the investigation," said William Grimm, a senior attorney at the center.

Grimm pointed to state data that show 43.2 percent of child abuse referrals in Contra Costa County last year were treated as "assessment-only" -- with no further action. That's more than double the statewide average of 21 percent.

"That's way too high," he said.

Alameda County's assessment-only rate was higher, at 46.6 percent. Solano County's was 41.7 percent. In Santa Clara County, it was 24.6 percent. In Los Angeles County, 7.2 percent of the referrals were categorized as "assessment-only."

Yaney credited a policy to record every call that comes in, regardless of its merit, and then weed out baseless ones. "We do that more than just about any other county," said Yaney. "That's why it looks so high."

Yet the state data also show that the number of child abuse referrals in Contra Costa County was 22 percent below the statewide average, as a percentage of the child population. The agency received more than 10,000 referrals for child abuse last year.

Past studies have found wide variations among counties in how likely they are to substantiate a report of abuse and neglect and remove children from their parental home.

Contra Costa County substantiates 19.5 percent of abuse reports, below the statewide average of 22.5 percent.

Caseworkers are armed with risk-assessment measures that weigh known factors such as mental illness, drug abuse, the age of the child and past abuse. Ultimately, decisions on whether to make home visits are subjective, said Yaney.

"It's more a matter of judgment and social workers' experience," she said.

Child abuse experts say it's common for several reports to go unsubstantiated before a bona fide abuse case arises. The county agency records each referral it gets, and the system shows earlier reports when there is a new one, said Debi Moss, a division manager with Contra Costa CFS.

"We always look at history when we're making a determination of how we're going to respond to a new report," said Moss. "We have to do that within bounds. It's invasion of somebody's privacy if we were to take something vague and step into somebody's home."

One neighbor in the Monterey Pines complex where Raijon, his mother and his 3-year-old sister lived accused the county agency of failing to save the youngster. A vigil is planned for today at 6:30 p.m. near the family's apartment.

CFS "just let this case fall all the way through the cracks," said Carlos Smith, a next-door neighbor. "There was obviously some problems, and they didn't do anything about it."

About 1,490 children died from child abuse or neglect in 2004, including 140 in California, according to the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Nearly 80 percent of the perpetrators were parents. Women committed filicide, the killing of a child, in 58 percent of those cases. More than four in five cases involved children younger than 4.

Most are infants, said Grimm.

"For an 8-year-old to die from abuse and neglect is very unusual," he said. "When older children start going to school, somebody is watching out for them in addition to the parents. Infants can't run away from the beatings or the head shaking. The 8-year-old has some ability for flight."

Raijon did flee, twice.

In July 2005, a patron at a fast-food restaurant called police after noticing him playing alone on the restaurant's jungle gym for two hours. Raijon told officers he ran away because his baby sitter used handcuffs on him. He denied that his mother abused him. The officer took him home, then forwarded a report to the county agency.

A social worker decided no further investigation was needed, police said.

On Nov. 23 he ran again, this time jumping out the window of his second-floor apartment. Police found him walking near Hilltop Mall in Richmond, carrying toys he said he stole at a store.

He didn't want to go home. A police officer went to Moses' apartment and saw some odd signs, including a chained fish tank. He wrote a report and forwarded it to the county agency.

A county social worker visited Raijon at the police station. A week later, she sent a form to Richmond police, saying she had reviewed the case and checked off "unsubstantiated," meaning no further investigation was needed.

Earlier, in March 2005, Moses called Richmond police to report her suspicion that her ex-husband molested her son, based in part on an assertion that the boy was "walking funny," which both she and a baby sitter noticed.

Police investigated but found no evidence of molestation. Raijon was interviewed at the Children's Interview Center in Martinez, a nonprofit group that helps law enforcement and social workers interview child crime victims. Moses did not return investigators' follow-up calls, and later flatly refused to identify the baby sitter and other details of the case.

Police learned Moses and her ex-husband were involved in a custody dispute regarding their 2-year-old daughter. Police had contacted CFS when they initiated the investigation, a standard practice. The agency took no action and the district attorneys office declined to file charges.

Child welfare agencies from Riverside to Alameda County have faced intense scrutiny in recent years after a child's death when there were previous reports or suspicions of abuse.

The Alameda County Department of Children and Family Services repeatedly failed state audits, faced scathing grand jury reports and was threatened with a state takeover in 2001. San Francisco and Los Angeles counties have faced similar threats of a state takeover for being out of compliance with state laws, according to Weston of the state social services agency.

In 2003, Alameda County came under further scrutiny after the beating death of 3-year-old Chazarus "Cha Cha" Hill of Oakland, allegedly at the hands of his father, after repeated complaints to the county agency by neighbors and relatives.

Often, such agencies face lawsuits. Courts generally have ruled that as long as there was some investigation, the counties are not held liable for what agencies concluded.

One scholar of filicide said the Richmond case raises disturbing questions that are all too common.

"The first is, who knew and who should have known?" said Michelle Oberman, a Santa Clara University law professor and co-author of "Mothers Who Kill their Children: Understanding the Acts of Moms from Susan Smith to the 'Prom Mom.'"

"There's a certain need for a community to join in the condemnation of the senseless death of an innocent child. To the extent to which we blame the mother, we eclipse the extent to which others may have helped to prevent it."

Staff writers Bruce Gerstman, Karl Fischer and Kimberly Wetzel contributed to this story. Reach John Simerman at 925-943-8072 or jsimerman@cctimes.com.